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field work subjects
Thursday, February 15 2024
Since I replace the keyboard on the bookstore cashiering laptop at Gretchen's workplace will require me to cut off many little plastic rivets and then, after installing a new keyboard, gluing it with hot glue, I decided to tackle a similar project here in the laboratory. I have a number of old Chromebooks, each with different issues. My first-ever Chromebook, a silver XE303C12 with just 2 GB of RAM, has a good keyboard but no audio output and bad hinges. Then I have another Chromebook, a black XE503C12 with 4 GB of RAM and a bad keyboard (but a good case, motherboard, and hinges). I'd already determined that the keyboards for the two models are both at least electronically interchangeable. But to use the good motherboard and case of the black Chromebook meant I would have to extract the keyboard from the silver Chromebook, and that would mean cutting through lots of plastic rivets. I did this in stages today until I'd managed the remove the keyboards from both Chromebooks. Only then did I find out that there are a number of physical differences between the two keyboards. Some of these could be fixed by cutting away posts in the case or aluminum on the keyboard, but alt keys and spacebars on the two keyboards are slightly different lengths. Still, I might be able to get around this by cutting away the plastic that goes between the too-long keys.
At 4:00pm today, two students arrived to interview Gretchen and me about our marriage and love life. This was field work for a love & relationships class taught by our friend Lisa P., who is a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz. The students interviewed us for nearly two hours in the living room on either side of a roaring fire in the woodstove, and we gave them the whole story, though not necessarily in the order it happened in time. We started with how we met in Harkness Co-op back in 1988 during an eyeroll-inducing icebreaker. We also told of how we became estranged in 1989, of getting back together in 2001, of our marriage in 2003, and of our life and adventures in the years since. We were pretty open about things. For example, we admitted that we no longer have that much sex, though when we have it, it's pretty good. I ventured to say that (at least for me) it's better than ever, mostly because I feel like I've grown closer to Gretchen over the many years of our relationship. This came as something of a surprise to Gretchen. Another was when I said that Gretchen might be the person most compatible with me that I've ever found. That said, neither of us have any spiritual beliefs and do not believe in such things as soul mates. There very well could be someone out there who is better for one or the other of us, and the fact that we never met is a traged. But we ended up happy with what we got, and that's plenty good enough. This was actually the second time students from Lisa P.'s class had interviewed us; during the covid pandemic, we'd been interviewed once via videochat.
Gretchen drove out to Adam's Fairacre Farms this evening because we didn't have any mushrooms and she needed them for making my homemade birthday pizza (which she would be doing tomorrow on my actual birthday). While she was out, a sudden blizzard arrived, putting as much as a half inch of snow on the ground. But it wasn't enough to keep Gretchen from climbing up Dug Hill Road in the Chevy Bolt. Later at the night after I'd gone to bed, howling winds arrived, flinging pine cones from the trees just west of the house onto the roof with audible thumps, some loud enough to cause Charlotte the Dog concern.
But before going to bed, Gretchen and I gave Charlotte another bath with her anti-itch shampoo.
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